When Beasts Roamed

Editor’s Note: After over a hundred years, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus is giving its last performance. The circus’s decline was set in motion over a year ago by the company’s decision, after charges of mistreatment of the elephants, to remove the beloved beasts from the lineup. The circus will conclude its final tour on May 7 in Providence, with one more stand-alone event two weeks later in Nassau County. Mike Fink, a frequent contributor to our paper and longtime East Side resident, remembers when the circus made eagerly anticipated, weeklong visits to our city, and when the elephants were left to roam through his Mt. Hope neighborhood:

In my boyhood here on the East Side, the Ringling Bros. elephants would graze – and poop – in “the lots” on North Main Street between Second and Third, behind the circus arena. They’d do it in my backyard too.

There were no fences separating our small lawns from the taller grasses of the abandoned farmland taken over by the circus tents and carousels. So the benign beasts – not only elephants, but zebras and llamas, too – would trot down our cobblestone driveway.

Our next-door neighbor, a retired teacher and descendant of the heroic Benjamin Church of King Philip’s War fame, did not want the roses in front of her WPA model bungalow trampled by the mammoths. “No, no, no!” she would shout, as she pushed a mild-mannered but unwelcome visitor out of her proud domain.

One year there was Dumbo, a young and charming creature who hid shyly behind our garage. I patted its hide, which felt like stroking the side of a Rhode Island mountain – like those Lincoln Woods rocks with baby trees growing from the cracks or grasses sprouting from their mesas.

When I began my career as an instructor in the English Department of the Rhode Island School of Design in 1957, the circus and its elephants were still in residence near my old home. I brought my students to sketch and photograph the circus, including performers taking a break and having a snack at the back door. I still cherish some of these sketches.

Alas, the circus soon moved its headquarters to the downtown Convention Center. The intimate bond between the humble households on Second and Third Streets and the Big Show was broken. The arena on the East Side survived for several more seasons, but the pastureland for pachyderms was no more. I had to make do with the elephants at Roger Williams Park Zoo or Fanny the Elephant at Slater Park.

The greatest threat to elephants now is not the circus but greedy ivory hunters and those who would deny humans’ impact on the environment. In light of current policy coming out of Washington, I offer my hope that we may protect the marvels of nature from the demands we make on them, and that the survival of the elephant, which has meant so much to so many all over the world, may finally inspire us to save its habitat from extinction.